Manhood in America: A Cultural History

For more than three decades, the women's movement and its scholars have exhaustively studied women's complex history, roles, and struggles. In Manhood in America, Second Edition, author Michael S. Kimmel--a leading authority in gender studies--argues that it is time for men to rediscover their own evolution. Drawing on a myriad of sources, including advice books, magazine columns, political pamphlets, and popular novels and films, he demonstrates that American men have been eternally frustrated by their efforts to keep up with constantly changing standards. Kimmel contends that men must follow the lead of the women's movement; it is only by mining their past for its best qualities and worst excesses that men will free themselves from the constraints of the masculine ideal.

Condensed and revised in this second edition, Manhood in America features updated chapters and examples that extend its coverage through the Bush administration. Touching on issues of masculinity as they pertain to current events, the book discusses such timely topics as post-9/11 politics, "self-made" masculinities (including those of Internet entrepreneurs), presidential campaigns, and gender politics. It also covers contemporary debates about fatherlessness, the biology of male aggression, and pop psychologists like John Gray and Dr. Laura. Outlining the various ways in which manhood has been constructed and portrayed in America, this engaging history is ideal as a main text for courses on masculinity or as a supplementary text for courses in gender studies and cultural history.

From inside the book

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Page 83This psychic threat to "masculine nature," he argued, was beginning to "warp the
psyches of our boys and young men into femininity."9 To others the problem
wasn't women but the demands of the culture itself that made men "weak,
effeminate ...

Page 13739 Terman and Miles were not the first behavioral scientists to attempt to
measure masculinity and femininity and apply those measures to sexual
orientation, but they were the most thorough. Their M-F scales included an
inventory of 456 ...

Page 154In Adam's Rib (1949), Tracy and Hepburn play married lawyers who find
themselves arguing opposite sides of the same case. Hepburn wins in the
courtroom by resorting to her "feminine wiles," but Tracy's revenge is exacted in
their own ...

MANHOOD IN AMERICA: A Cultural History

User Review - Kirkus

Kimmel (Sociology/SUNY, Stony Brook) applies the methodology of feminist history to the experience of being male in America. Rejecting the idea that almost every history book is about the male ...Read full review

Manhood in America: a cultural history

User Review - Not Available - Book Verdict

Kimmel, a noted men's studies authority, coeditor of Against the Tide (LJ 2/1/92), and editor of The Politics of Manhood, reviewed below, presents in his own words the first cultural history of men in ...Read full review